New and pulse ox question

Hi all. I am new to board. In august i had my son at 23 weeks. He finally came home a week and a half ago..we are so happy! He is on oxygen and has same white matter loss due to a brain bleed with damage that may affect his sensory or motor skills. He is too young to know if or how it will affect him..so thats a waiting game..he is enrolled in early intervention.

I had a question about the pulse ox probes and i hope this is the right place to go. I have been lurking for a little while and have seen some of your kiddos are on oxygen as well. Our insurance will pay for 4 probes a month. When i found that out i thought that was ridiculous because in the nicu they had to change his a couple times a week. Well we have only been home for a week and a half and we are on probe number 3. The other two just stopped working the monitor would not find the signal. We tape the cord to his leg so it won't pull but we cant make them last.

We go to the pulmonary doctor on wed and i am going to ask him for a letter to send to the company and our insurance saying we need moreto probes.

In the meantime..Any tricks on making them last??

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A born & died on 12/16/11 at 20 weeks// B born on 8/31/12 at 23 wks&1 day, home after 145 in the NICU!

Des posted the name of the best stuff to use to wrap it. My lo is soooo sensory he doesn't tolerate a sock, but even though our luck is crappy w them we have the best luck wrapping the side of the foot w the probe, then the tape (been using coban, going to switch) then a posey over the tape, then run the wire up the foot and wrap again at the ankle to stabilize it. There is only so far you can make them last, though. When the electrodes die, they die. We use them until they won't reqad anymore. My hubby has even tried to clean the sensor area with alcohol and adhesive remover once they stop reading. That doesn't work, fyi. Glad you're asking for more on the script :) maybe take some 3 and 4 day old probes to show the doc- they would never accept equipment in that bad of shape at the hospital.

Sometimes cleaning the light helps some. The best thing I've used is waterproof sports tape, it's kinda like a foam tape that sticks really well but doesn't pull hard to get it off and you can reuse it a million times before it stops sticking. Edie ends up with light burns from coban.

Try asking your home health company for some extra probe wrap stickers. We get an unlimited amount of these. You just cut the stretchy stuff off the actual probe and wrap the new adhesive wrap stuff on it.